The Chairman of the Council, Chairs of Committees and Sub-Committees and Portfolio Holders to answer any questions on any matters in relation to which the Council has powers or duties or which affect the District of which due notice has been given in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 13.
Minutes:
Question 1 - Councillor Mansel to Councillor Flatman, Cabinet Member for Communities, Health and Wellbeing
Is the Council offering help and support to village halls, parish councils and other community groups to facilitate social gathering in heated communal spaces during this period of soaring energy prices and as winter approaches?
Response from Councillor Flatman, Cabinet Member for Communities, Health and Wellbeing
The term ‘warm banks’ has emerged in recent months and is encouraging community locations this winter to remain open for longer to provide people with a warm, safe place to be rather than heating homes or living in a cold property.
The Council has launched its ‘Winter Warmth Support Grant’ and is available to support small grass roots, community groups and other not-for-profit organisations that support residents across Mid Suffolk with the cost-of-living crisis by offering 'one off' grants to support the anticipated increases in running costs between November 2022 and April 2023, including rent increases and electricity cost rises.
This will enable community groups to open more often during this period and for longer to support local residents by providing a warm place to be.
Grants of between £250 and up to £5,000 can be applied for and the deadline for applications is 5pm on 31st October. The link to the Grant is on our Communities web pages Winter Warmth Support Grant » Babergh Mid Suffolk
Supplementary Question from Councillor Mansel
We only got notified of this scheme for community grants earlier this week, I think it was about 6 days ago and applications have to be in by Monday, that’s quite a short time limit so is there any plans for any future widening of the support grant application window and any long term support.
Response from Councillor Flatman, Cabinet Member for Communities, Health and Wellbeing.
We have had a lot of applications already so people are on it, I emailed all my parishes the moment I knew it was going out and I think you’ll find that will be probably up to the limit of what we are offering but we will see and it depends on the level of ask from groups, we are hoping to attract smaller community groups to reach across the district, many of these groups only need small amounts of money to support or extend their work with our residents so we could support higher numbers maybe.
Question 2 – Councillor Field to Councillor Gould, Cabinet Member for Assets and Investments
I am pleased to see that CIFCO has had a successful year and at the time the report was produced had recovered the property value that existed at time of the various purchases. However, that was some time ago and there has been considerable financial turbulence nationally and internationally since the accounts were drawn up.
Could the Cabinet Member give a view of the likely impact of dramatically rising interest rates on the District Councils programme to finance the CIFCO investment and of the likely recession on the core CIFCO business. I would ask that this be in sufficient detail for members and the public to understand the risks involved. It would appear that CIFCO client companies will be in some problem and property values may fall substantially?
Response from Councillor Gould, Cabinet Member for Assets and Investments.
The CIFCO portfolio fundamentals remain strong, despite the current volatile economic and geopolitical environment. These include:-
· The weighted average lease contract is 6.4 years across 78 tenants providing CIFCO with a diversified and resilient income stream.
· Projected revenue for 2023/24 remains in line with the current year, despite the predicted recessionary headwinds
· Further diversification is provided by the asset base with the revenue being derived from 21 properties across different property sectors
· Core markets such as industrial continue to experience low development and vacancy levels which is supporting continued demand. CIFCO has 55% weighting to this sector.
· The portfolio is substantially let with a low void rate of 2.90%
· Revenue collection rates remain above 98% with 0.01% attributable to pre-pandemic arrears.
Whilst Capital values will be subject to volatility and values have adjusted to the rising cost of debt, the core fundamentals of generating a sustainable and robust revenue stream for the Councils remain.
The Council is monitoring the cost of debt situation closely. The exposure to fluctuations in short term interest rates is minimal at the moment as the Council took advantage of some low rates with other local authorities before rates increased. The Council also has some longer term borrowing at fixed rates. The Council is in the process of reviewing the impact for next year as part of the budget work and will be presenting revised projections in the budget for 23/24.
Question 3 – Councillor Mellen to Councillor Hadingham, Cabinet Member for Housing
Many of the refugees from Ukraine who came to Suffolk under the Homes for Ukraine scheme are coming to the end of their first six months as guests here and are needing to find new accommodation. Where do these vulnerable people stand in terms of qualifying for social housing?
Response from Councillor Hadingham, Cabinet Member for Housing
The Ukrainian refugees under the Homes for Ukraine visa scheme are eligible to join the housing register in both Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Councils and their housing needs will be assessed in line with the current Allocations Policy. Once they have been assessed they are able to bid for properties. However, this could take some time till they are successful, and they will need to widen their area choices to be rehoused into social housing, this will be dependent on where they are looking to live, and the size of accommodation required.
Information has been provided to support Ukraine refugees on how to apply for social housing on the following website: Ukraine Refugee Gateway Guidance - HomeChoice (gatewaytohomechoice.org.uk). There is also information on waiting times based on area that can be used to give an indication on how long it is likely to take to be rehoused: on the Gateway to Home Choice website https://www.gatewaytohomechoice.org.uk/PropertySearch/Index.
There are some properties that are subject to section 106 agreements, with a location criterion and unless they can meet the local connection criteria, they will not be successful in securing these properties through the housing register. This has been a feature of Allocations Policies since the Localism Act 2011. Unfortunately, this is a situation that will be faced by all refugees that have recently arrived in the United Kingdom and they are unlikely to meet the local connection requirement. There is nothing that would prevent them bidding on such properties, but they are not likely to be successful, I can only advise that they should also consider properties that are not restricted by a local connection criterion and widen their areas. They should also consider the private rented sector which would allow them to access accommodation in an area of their choosing.
Supplementary question from Councillor Mellen
Given the huge amount of uncertainty for host families and their guests are we doing what we promised to do at the start of the crisis which is to wrap support around our Ukrainian guests and their host families.
Response from Councillor Hadingham, Cabinet Member for Housing
I can just tell you about how many cases we have dealt with if that is helpful. So in terms of cases so far where we have had to step in, only a handful compared to the total number within our districts, out of 14 cases nine in Mid Suffolk and 5 in Babergh, 6 have been resolved having been offered advice, 1 has been rehoused in the private rented sector, 2 have been rematched with new host families, 3 cases have been closed as applicants have either left the UK or approached other authorities and we have 2 cases remaining where we continue to work with the families to prevent them becoming homeless.
Question 4 – Councillor Mellen to Councillor Whitehead, Cabinet Member for Finance
With businesses moving into the Freeport / Investment zone not paying business rates, there will be a loss of income into the council coffers. Is the portfolio holder confident that central government will make up this shortfall?
Response from Councillor Whitehead, Cabinet Member for Finance
Short answer is yes
More information - Freeports/Investment Zones, as with the preceding Enterprise Zones have a programme of support for businesses locating on site, including business rate relief of up to 100% of rates payable for 5 years (Freeport) or 10 years (Investment Zones). As with other form of statutory reliefs, any discount to businesses locating on these sites will be repaid to the Council via a S31 grant. This ensures that the discounts to businesses do not come at a cost to the Local Authority. Councils hosting Freeports or Investment Zones will receive 100% of the business rates growth in designated sites above an agreed baseline for 25 years.
Supplementary question from Councillor Mellen
Can I ask has any assessment been made of the impact of the disparity if tax regimes inside and outside the freeport or investment zones and particularly the impacts on communities if business decide to move from outside to inside.
Response from Councillor Whitehead, Cabinet Member for Finance
I think that’s a question better directed at Jeremy Hunt because it’s a nationwide thing but certainly we ourselves haven’t done any studies that I am aware of.
Question 5 – Councillor Eburne to Councillor Whitehead, Cabinet Member for Finance
For the year 2021/22 an additional £4 million was available, on top of the normal budget, to be spent on separate projects. Another £1.1 million was added to this for 2022/23. Of this £5.1 million total extra funding, how much has actually been spent to date?
Response from Councillor Whitehead, Cabinet Member for Finance
I think you are quite right to ask for an update on these major spending programmes. However, it does feel somewhat surreal, to be standing here reporting on our additional spending proposals of £5.1million when I'm sure that many other councils, up and down the country, are at this time instead wrestling with the challenges of finding spending cuts running into millions of pounds and would relish our Mid Suffolk situation.
We have been busy working on about 50 individual projects within this ambitious programme to support our residents and communities. Whilst we have spent approximately £1.5m, the majority of the rest of that money has been committed to projects that are being rolled out in several phases, to fixed term staff posts that still have of the majority of their time to run, to funds that will be drawn down as need demands for example to support victims of domestic abuse, grants to support energy efficiency in the private rented sector or support for businesses through various schemes where applications can be made.
We have also used this additional money to lever in significant additional match funding from external organisations, which is in the region of £400k to date, close to the £438k target that we set for officers.
The Cabinet would, however, like all Members to have a more detailed update on all the work we have in progress and to that end we will have an all Members briefing on this before Christmas.
Supplementary question from Councillor Eburne
Thank you for your comprehensive response and I look forward to a briefing on that, if only £1.5 million has been spent to date that is a good start. Since we allocated that £4million that’s a good 18 months on from that and if you could give me assurances that the remainder £3.6millon will be spent by the end of the financial year and if it isn’t can we please use it to address the cost of living crisis such as by providing a council tax rebate for those citizens that most need it while there’s a cost of living crisis.
Response from Councillor Whitehead, Cabinet Member for Finance
Some of these projects are designed to run over a couple of years, they’ve some time in terms of recruitment to get traction I would accept but basically a project that lasts for two years will not be all spent by the end of this year but the spending and commitment is different but we shall see by the end of the year well as part of the all member briefing we will look at what’s spent and what’s committed and what is spare which I suspect is very little.
Question 6 Councillor Stringer to Councillor Burn, Cabinet Member for Planning
Does the portfolio holder for planning agree that Mid Suffolk should develop its own local policy guidance for determining solar farm applications?
Response from Councillor Burn, Cabinet Member for Planning
Thank you, Councillor Stringer. As you’ll be aware, there is a policy on energy sources, storage and distribution within the emerging Joint Local Plan, which is still under examination. I had already asked officers to look into how we might supplement this and my suggestion is that we will develop and adopt a renewable energy and low carbon position statement so that we can move quickly while recognising that this is a complicated matter.
As I say, this is by no means a simple issue, with energy security, food production, landscape impacts and heritage, to name but a few of the considerations our officers and Members of planning committees must grapple with. We have raised our concerns and frustrations about the lack of joined-up thinking of energy-related projects versus food production at the national level, and encouraged a more strategic, joined up national plan for energy development to be drawn up. However, we will continue to work towards doing what we can at a local level to provide guidance on our new Joint Local Plan policies through the position statement I referred to earlier.
Supplementary question from Councillor Stringer
Why have we not introduced this to date and when will this guidance be ready.
Response from Councillor Burn, Cabinet Member for Planning
We haven’t introduced it to date because the situation has been very fluid. It is being worked on at the moment and hopefully it will be ready in the early part of next year and by that I mean round about February / March time but if you would like a more complete answer because I haven’t got all the details at my fingertips, I will ask the Corporate Manager for Planning Policy to give you a fuller answer if I may.
It was agreed that the Corporate Manager would respond out of the meeting.
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